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17. DORÉ. Enault, Louis. Londres. Illustré de 174 gravures sur bois par Gustave Doré. Paris. Librairie Hachette et Cie. 1876.
Small folio. (385 x 296 mm). pp. (ii), (i), 430. Half-title with printer’s credit verso, printed title in red and black and Enault’s text illus- trated with 174 wood-engraving after Doré, of which 52 are full-page. Contemporary burgundy half-morocco, marbled boards and endpapers, banded spine with gilt title in six compartments, original publisher’s blue printed wrappers and backstrip with titles in tred and black retained, t.e.g.
A very scarce deluxe example of Louis Enault’s Londres illustrated by Gustave Doré printed on Chine and with a signed original drawing.
This is the first French edition; the work was first published in English in 1872 with text by Blanchard Jerrold. No copies of the English edition were issued on Chine.
The original drawing by Doré (420 x 350 mm), framed separately, is a preparatory sketch for one of the illustrations in the book, Pauvresse à Londres. The image shows a bare-footed young woman seen from behind carrying a small child on her left shoulder, her head turned to the right, another child, very slightly older, her face half-turned towards the viewer shelters within the skirts of the young woman, the whole scene suggesting pathos and poverty.
La publication de cette édition française ne reçut que des éloges. (Leblanc). [Ray 251 (English edition) & 252; SR / BF 59].
18. DORÉ, Gustave. Arioste (Ludovico Ariosto). Roland Furieux. Poème Héroïque Traduit par A. J. du Pays et Illustré par Gustave Doré. Paris. Librairie Hachette et Cie. 1879.
Large folio. (498 x 330 mm). pp. VIII, 658. Leaf with bound-in original drawing on card, signed ‘G. Doré’ at lower right and annotated at foot, leaf with half-title recto, monochrome frontispiece verso, printed title in red and black with vignette, leaf with ‘Exemplaire réservé, imprimee pour / Louis Bréton’ recto, four leaves with ‘Notice Biographique et Littéraire’ by A. J. du Pays with head- and tail- piece and Ariosto’s text in French with illustrated chapter title for each ‘chant’, 82 hors-texte monochrome plates and and more than 450 vignettes, text illustrations and head- and tail-pieces, complete with initial and final blank leaves and justification; all of the illus- trations are wood-engravings after Gustave Doré. Scarlet half morocco by Pierre-Lucien Martin with his signature gilt, marbled boards, banded spine with gilt titles in six compartments, marbled endpapers, original wrappers preserved, matching white wool-lined marbled board slipcase.
A superb large paper copy on Chine, bound by Martin, and with a large signed drawing by Doré.
From the édition de tête of 105 copies, with this one of 40 on Chine, a nominatif example printed for Louis Bréton; Doré’s large signed drawing is for page 65.
This was the final classical work illustrated by Doré. The artist died of a heart attack in 1883, at the age of 51. In Roland Furieux Doré reaches to the depths of his imagination: battles, monsters, epic loves and drama are conjured up in magnificent detail in his illustrations. The image of Roger rescuing Angélique was directly inspired by Ingres’ painting which hangs in the Louvre.
Ludovico Ariosto (1474 - 1533) wrote this, Orlando Furioso (or Roland Furieux in French), his most famous work, between 1506 and 1532. The first forty cantos were published in 1516, before Ariosto revised and embellished the work for a second edition in 1521. The final edition was published shortly before Ariosto’s death in 1532 with a total of forty-six cantos; it was this edition that was to assure Ariosto’s legacy as the composer of one of the great literary epics in verse and that was to have a profound effect on European literary history.
[BF / SR 61, 62; Ray 254].